


the future is all mine

by younglegends



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Groundhog Day, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-25
Updated: 2017-08-25
Packaged: 2018-12-19 17:32:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11902689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/younglegends/pseuds/younglegends
Summary: If you live for yourself, there's no way you'll have any regrets.Groundhog day AU where Kyouko keeps repeating the same day, over and over—the last day—except when she finally takes the time to look past Sayaka, something about Akemi Homura doesn't quite line up right, every time.





	the future is all mine

**Author's Note:**

> this story operates on one other slight divergence from canon: that sayaka turning into a witch, and kyouko sacrificing herself to end them both, happen over the course of the same night.

> _the door is locked from the inside_  
>  _don't wait around, i won't arrive_  
>  _keep a room somewhere for me_  
>  _i'll find it on my way back_
> 
> [waves](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0udJc_iMlAU), metric

 

When the smoke clears Kyouko has to squint through the dust and the dark, as though trying to remember why she’s here. It’s cold, the kind of clear cold that sinks through Kyouko like a knife, or maybe that’s just her recalling the way she had sent her soul gem arcing up through the air like the flight path of a bird that had always known where to go, straight forward into the light as her blade pierced it to the bone. Like a home. When she closes her eyes she can still see its afterimage imprinted on the inside of her eyelids, like a spark bursting into brilliant flame, and oh, she’s never seen anything burn that bright before, not even the ruins of her house, her father’s collapsing church—no. She opens her eyes. It’s cold because she’s submerged in water, streams of bubbles swirling her hair all around her, running through her fingers, leading her in the only direction she knows—towards the light, where she can see it solidify into a single shape, tall and strong and so blinding it hurts to look at, like the sun glinting off the edge of a sword—

She is closer now, and closer still, and how could she have ever thought it cold? The light is warm as it falls upon her shoulders, her upturned face, and she does not tremble.

Oh, Sayaka, she thinks as her hand closes around another’s, as the light runs through her sharp as steel, it’s okay. I won’t let you be lonely, anymore.

Tilt of her head forward, into the fire. The light burns, but she does not close her eyes. Flurry of movement, rippling of water, and Kyouko breathes in.

 

*

 

Spots of gold. Bright, white, filtering through the dark. Kyouko blinks open her eyes.

“What the fuck,” is the first thing she says.

The morning is late. The empty room is silent as a grave around her. Kyouko’s hand reaches out, absurdly, before she can stop it. She leaves it there, lingering in the air, unsure of itself.

It was only a dream.

“Oh,” Kyouko says to herself, staring down at her outstretched hand. Uses it to grab the bag of chips on the dresser and shove a handful down her throat. They taste stale. She swallows them down anyway.

Later that day when she gives herself up to fire and water, there’s a vague thought in the back of her mind that all this is familiar, that she’s seen it somewhere, once in a dream. But then there’s nothing but the light, and the warmth, and it’s easy to drift away, almost like she’s already done it before.

 

*

 

Spots of gold, sunlight peeking in from between the blinds, and this time Kyouko falls off the bed, slams her forehead against the floor.

“What the fuck,” she says, muffled against the carpet.

She raises her head, looks out the window. The morning is late and there is a sour taste in her mouth.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

Wind rustles the blinds, like laughter at the punchline of a joke. Kyouko doesn’t join in. Kyouko grabs her uneaten bag of chips and goes out to investigate.

Miki Sayaka is not dead, or a witch, or at school, or at home, or even with that pathetic violinist. Kyouko finds her on the outskirts of the city in an abandoned warehouse with her sword buried six inches deep into a witch’s neck. As the magic and the misery tear down around them like ashes scattered in the wind, she turns around, impossibly alive and alight and fading fast.

“Hey,” Kyouko says. Leaning up against the wall, casual, like the sight doesn’t stop all the breath in her body. “What’s up?”

“Are you here to fight?” Sayaka says, and where once she would have sounded hostile, or wary, or even resigned, her voice is now utterly bleak, eyes empty. All of it is so wrong Kyouko wonders how on earth she had missed it the first time. Sayaka's body a warning sign, flashing every alarm. 

“I asked you a question,” Sayaka says, picking up her sword, and Kyouko considers it. She doesn’t know what she’s here to do at all—doesn’t know why she’s still here, why it’s happening all over again. It only just strikes her that maybe this is a second chance. To flee, perhaps, get the hell out of town. To survive. Except Kyouko had woken up this morning and drawn herself straight back to Sayaka like a string unravelling itself through to the heart of a maze. There’s nowhere to run but headfirst into the storm, so Kyouko rips open her bag of chips and pops one in her mouth, crunches down.

“I’m here to help you,” Kyouko says. Flash of fanged teeth in a grin.

Sayaka stares at her flatly. “I don’t need your help,” she says. “I don’t need anyone at all.”

“You really have a way of charming a girl,” Kyouko tells her. “C’mon, just let me tag along. We’re on the same side, you know. I won’t get in your way.”

Sayaka narrows her eyes—and there’s the old flicker of fire, there’s the fight. Kyouko feels a flash of deep satisfaction at having coaxed it out of her, found it again. Like thumbing for a bruise, and pressing down. “We’re not the same,” Sayaka says. “You just want the grief seeds. I’m not on your side, and I’m not going to fight with you. Not ever.”

Kyouko winces. Ouch. “Look,” she begins, and then stops short, because Sayaka’s sword tip is suddenly inches from her eye.

“I won’t warn you again,” Sayaka says. She’s not even looking at Kyouko, but at some point past her shoulder, as though she can’t take her eyes off something terrible beyond them both. “Leave from my sight, or I’ll kill you, too, like I’ve killed everything else,” and Kyouko’s had enough of this.

“You idiot,” Kyouko says, “I’m not gonna let you do this again—”

Sayaka’s face cracks into an awfully familiar smile and Kyouko’s heart stops in her chest. “You’re right,” she says, voice thin with hollow laughter. “I’m such an idiot, aren’t I?”

Wind rustling the blinds. Kyouko’s eyes widen in horror. “ _No_ —it’s too soon, it’s not right—”

A cloud drifts over the midmorning sun, and when Sayaka breaks down Kyouko has just enough time to think _fuck fuck fuck of course I fucked it up so bad_ before the blast blows the both of them away.

 

*

 

Spots of gold, sunlight, and this time Kyouko descends upon Sayaka like the wrath of God, chain flying and spear slashing until Sayaka’s backed down to her knees and _still_ fighting back. “This is what you wanted,” Kyouko snarls, “this is all you wanted,” and Sayaka laughs, teeth bloodied.

“You’re right,” she says, and it hurts worse than when she falls apart all the same, strikes Kyouko down where she stands.

 

*

 

Spots of gold and sun and Kyouko doesn’t bother trying to make contact. Just quietly shadows Sayaka across the city, the whole day, and when Homura shows up Kyouko knocks her out of the way, grabs Sayaka’s hand and runs.

“What are you doing?” Sayaka says. “Let go of me.”

“No,” Kyouko says. Tightens her grip and holds on for dear life. “Never.”

“What are you, crazy?” Sayaka says.

“Yeah,” Kyouko says. “Yeah, I am.”

Laughter ringing across the universes. “Yeah,” Sayaka whispers. “We really are, aren’t we?”

Buildings rush past them. Streets and lights and cars. Kyouko runs and runs and runs and doesn’t look back. Keeps holding on even as the hand in hers turns into something else entirely, as the city around them blurs over in the shadow of the maze. Kyouko runs until there’s nowhere left to go, nothing left to do but turn back around and face what she’s made.

“Oh, fuck it,” she says, and flings away her heart, again.

 

*

 

Spots of gold and sun and when Homura shows up Kyouko knocks her out of the way, grabs for Sayaka’s hand.

“What are you doing?” Sayaka says, jerking back. “Get away from me.”

“For the love of god,” Kyouko says, throwing up her hands, “why do you always have to make this _difficult,_ I’m trying to save your life here—”

“Sakura,” Homura says. Polite. The telltale cock of a gun. “Get out of the way. I’m ending this here and now.”

Kyouko bares her teeth. “Over my dead body,” she says.

Homura barely spares her a disinterested glance before moving her gun two inches to the right and shooting Sayaka’s soul gem right out of her body, aim straight and true. The shards cascade through the air like falling light, and Kyouko catches them in the palm of her hand. Clenches it into a fist. Then marches straight up to Homura, hand clamping down around the butt of her gun, dragging it over and across to the soul gem in her chest, gleaming in the dark. Waiting.

“What did I just say,” Kyouko says. Shattered crystal digging deep into her skin. Bleeding out onto the cool metal of Homura’s gun.

Homura looks at her. Something in her eyes like recognition.

“Very well, then,” she says. “I’ll just do it by myself, again.”

Her bullet pierces Kyouko straight through her soul gem and into her heart.

 

*

 

Gold and sun and Kyouko decides to avoid Akemi Homura as well as possible. At any rate, though, she’s given her an idea. In the morning she sneaks in so close to Sayaka through the shadows she could press a kiss to the back of her neck, but instead she curls her arm around and snags the soul gem from under her shirt and runs. She can hear the body hit the ground behind her but she doesn’t look back, just keeps the soul gem cradled in her hands as she climbs up to the tallest rooftop in the city.

“We’re gonna wait out this day,” Kyouko tells her, “you and me.”

When Sayaka’s soul gem starts clouding over anyway Kyouko’s almost offended. “Well,” she says, “I did take you to the best view this piece of shit town’s got to offer, so don’t say I never did anything for you.” Holds up the gem so Sayaka can see it all—the buildings and the lights and the tiny little lives beneath them. It’s nothing beautiful, Kyouko knows, but it’s the best they’ve got.

As the blackness swallows them up Kyouko presses her lips to the top of the gem, like an afterthought.

 

*

 

Gold and Kyouko spends the day killing all the witches before Sayaka can get to them, their grief seeds clinking together like jewels in her pocket as she races across the city, only she’s too late and Homura’s gotten there first and the gunshot echoes all the way across town—

 

*

 

Gold and Kyouko spends the day killing all the witches before Sayaka can get to them and this time she makes it to her before Homura does, snatches away Sayaka’s soul gem and with shaking hands presses grief seed after seed to its glassy surface until the last of the darkness has cleared away, but when she restores the gem to Sayaka’s body the fallout backfires faster than she’s ever seen.

“I swore to _never_ use another’s misery for myself,” Sayaka wails, already growing into something monstrous, the witch in her that Kyouko almost knows better than the girl, by now, “I’ll never be selfish again, never never never—”

Then it’s a good thing that I’m selfish enough for the both of us, Kyouko thinks, rising up to meet her.

 

*

 

“You’re going to _die,_ ” Kyouko says, first thing. “You’re going to turn into a witch but I’m telling you, it doesn’t have to be this way—”

“What would _you_ know about it?” Sayaka says.

“Everything,” Kyouko says, “I know everything, you’re going to die—”

“So it was all pointless, then, in the end,” Sayaka says, and her sword drops down, eyes emptying out.

“It wasn’t pointless,” Kyouko shouts up at her later, dodging wheel after wheel. “It’s not pointless, because I’m still here, trying to save you, aren’t I?”

The witch roars in wordless agony. The orchestra plays on.

“And as long as I’m still here,” Kyouko says, “so are you.”

She sends her soul gem up with a kiss.

“So come back to me,” Kyouko whispers, “because I’m coming back for you, every time—”

 

*

 

Sayaka is turning to leave and Kyouko doesn’t hesitate, drops Homura like a rag doll without so much as a glance backward and runs after her. When Sayaka boards the train Kyouko is right there by her side.

“Why was I fighting?” Sayaka says. “Tell me.”

Kyouko steps forward, right into Sayaka’s space, and looks her dead in the eye. “Listen,” Kyouko says, “Miki Sayaka you listen to me, I’ve been doomed to live this dead and empty world for so long and you’re the only light in all of it, you’re what I dream of when I sleep and what I’ll die for to be with and what I’ll live on for to save because I’m sure as hell not letting you go now that I’ve found you, god, I found you, I stopped believing in miracles and heroes and stories but then I found you and you were all of them at once, so give me a story, give me a story where love and courage win and everything works out in the end and I save you because you’re everything in this world that’s worth saving, if you can believe it, if you can just believe me,” and she lunges forward, meets Sayaka’s mouth with her own.

Her heart is flying up into her throat because for the first time Miki Sayaka does not fight her. Mouth falling into a perfectly round _o,_ so soft and sweet Kyouko can’t think of doing anything but letting herself taste it, nudging that mouth the rest of the way open so Kyouko can slip in her tongue and trace the line of her lips from the inside out.

And then Sayaka is kissing _back_ and it’s like all the lights in Mitakihara have lit up all at once, just for her.

They stumble out of the train still tangled together and there are strangers staring at them in shock and disgust, pointing and whispering and Kyouko drags her fingers through Sayaka’s hair and Sayaka runs her hands over Kyouko’s back and they break for air, Sayaka heaving great gasps of breath and flushing red, biting down on the swell of her bottom lip, and Kyouko leans in and presses her lips to the spot, gentle, sweeps away the sting with her tongue, and their mouths are sliding against each other again and Sayaka’s pressing in all around her and Kyouko’s reaching out for anything, all of her she can touch, Sayaka bursting open beneath her like the tremble of a fault line cracking the body of the earth in two, Sayaka Sayaka Sayaka on her mouth like prayer—

“Fucking perverts,” someone hurls at them, and Sayaka goes cold, even as Kyouko grabs at her, no, no, no—

Sayaka stumbles back, a hand coming up to her mouth bitten red, eyes wide.

“What am I doing?” Sayaka says. “This isn’t—I don’t—what have you _done_ to me—”

“No, Sayaka,” Kyouko says, “listen to me, believe me, I lo—”

“I’m such an idiot,” Sayaka whispers, and the ground rumbles, splits apart.

 

*

 

Spots of gold, sunlight peeking in through the blinds, and Kyouko pulls the covers back over her head, every day for the next week of repeats, each time only emerging to watch the birth of Sayaka’s witch clawing its way into the world before it consumes everything, too bright and beautiful to look away.

 

*

 

When Sayaka boards the train Kyouko is right there by her side.

“Why was I fighting?” Sayaka says. “Tell me.”

“You know,” Kyouko says, “I can’t for the life of me remember.”

They arrive at the train station and sit down side by side. When the last of Sayaka’s soul gem clouds over Kyouko is there to gently cup Sayaka’s cheek in her palm, tilt her face towards hers, and catch the grief spilling out of her with her mouth. Swallows all of it down, until it touches her soul, too. Tips it over the edge.

“To hell with it,” Kyouko says, “to hell with it all,” and lets the world tear itself apart in their wake.

 

*

 

When Kyouko can bear to look at Sayaka’s face again, when she can see it for what it is again without the light of destruction sharpening itself in her eyes, she starts taking stock of what she can do, and what she can’t.

This is what it is:

Spots of gold, filtering through the dark. Late morning light letting itself in through the blinds of her bedroom window. The means will vary, but Sayaka will collapse under the weight of her own grief, every time. Sometimes Kyouko goes down with her. Sometimes she holds on, carries Sayaka’s body in her arms, follows Homura out of hell only to be lured right back to it in the end.

The thought strikes Kyouko that maybe she’s actually the witch, now, and this is a maze of her own making. Doomed to wander her own ruin.

“I get it now,” she tells the blinds on her window. “Very funny.” The wind rustles in reply. She tips the chip bag down over her mouth to get every last crumb. Goes out to do it all over again.

 

*

 

And maybe it’s only because Kyouko is paying better attention, now, but one day something strange happens, stranger than the usual, because she isn’t the one who caused it. She’s standing in the heart of Sayaka’s despair, arms heavy with the weight of her lifeless body, bitter failure on her tongue—a familiar taste, by now. On cue time shudders and comes to a grinding halt around her as Homura holds out her hand, and when Kyouko takes it Homura straightens back up, standing tall like always, the shape of her a statue, just as immovable as the rest of them. Then the world shifts. Homura turns her head slightly to the left, and the staggering force of it slams into Kyouko with all the violence of a violin string being snapped— _wrong._

“ _What_ the hell did you just do,” says Kyouko.

There’s a pause. Then the sideways slant of Homura’s gaze, face angled back towards her. Eyes dark, unreadable—there’s nothing new, there.

“What do you mean?” says Homura, tone neutral.

“You just—you didn’t, before—” Kyouko stops talking. It must have been a trick of the light, she thinks, or of the dark. She shifts, remembers the weight of her world in her arms, looks away.

“Forget it,” Kyouko says.

 

*

 

But Kyouko doesn’t forget it, not the next day when Homura runs a hand through the sweep of her long black hair, and Kyouko’s lived it long enough to know that’s not what happens, that’s not how the story goes. But of course, Kyouko realizes. Time. This is the cause.

“It’s you,” Kyouko blurts. “You’re doing this.”

Homura stops dead. “Excuse me?”

“You’re doing this,” and Kyouko clenches her grip tighter on Homura’s wrist, drags her backward so she can stare her in the eyes. “What did you do? What have you done to me?”

“What are you talking about,” Homura says, and when Kyouko tugs harder they stumble a little, so that Kyouko has to let go of her hand in order to steady herself, and then time is returning her back to where Sayaka is waiting for her.

 

*

 

Spots of gold. Blinds cutting ribbed light into the room. Air alive with dust motes. Kyouko rolls over in bed and considers Akemi Homura.

“Huh,” she says. Reaches over and snags a chip, pops it into her mouth.

For the first time Kyouko doesn’t go to Miki Sayaka. Shows up at Mitakihara Middle School, instead. Class is in session, but Kyouko walks straight through the hallways to Homura’s class, bangs open the door, walks up to where she’s sitting in the first row.

“I know it’s you,” she declares, slamming her hands down on the desk in front of Homura.

“Excuse me,” the teacher’s stammering, “who are you, do you go to this school,” but Homura narrows her eyes back at her.

“What are you talking about?” she says.

“I’m stuck in time,” Kyouko says, “and it’s got something to do with you,” and there’s a flash of something then, in Homura’s eyes, like interest. A flicker of life at last.

“So you’ve been reliving the same day over and over,” Homura says, later. Her voice is detached. Gone is the interest, and she sounds irritated instead. Like Kyouko’s some kind of bother. Oh, gee, sorry, Kyouko thinks, didn’t mean to get caught up in an endless time loop, sorry to disturb your day. By all means, go on and continue with your math class. “It certainly sounds unbelievable, but there’s no other way to explain how you know about things that haven’t happened yet.”

“ _So,_ I know it’s your fault somehow,” Kyouko says. “You’re the one with freaky time powers. Everything else was the same in every repeat, everyone except you. You’ve got control over this somehow. Just fix it, so that I can—”

She stops, because she doesn’t know how that sentence should end. If Homura puts a stop to all of this, whatever it is, will Kyouko go back to being dead? Of course, maybe Kyouko’s already dead, and this is just hell, in which case none of this will matter anyway. Then again, maybe Kyouko jumped the gun with getting Homura involved. Maybe an eternity spent chasing after Sayaka’s ghost is better than nothing at all.

“I can’t fix it,” Homura says. Cold and blank as the rest of her house. Kyouko’s fingers itch, to spill the cup of tea on her lap all over the stark white upholstery. “I’ve never encountered this before. I don’t know what’s happening to you, or why. It might be a side-effect of my own time manipulation, if anything. A mistake.”

“A mistake,” Kyouko echoes.

“I’d suggest making the most of it while you can. Maybe think about using the opportunity to do something you always wanted to, but never had the chance. Who knows how long this will last for you?”

Kyouko stands up. The teacup, satisfyingly, upends itself. She hopes the stain never washes out. “You know what,” she says. “I changed my mind. I don’t need you to fix anything. Because I’m going to do that myself. I’m going to keep Miki Sayaka from becoming a witch.”

Kyouko makes her grand exit, but what galls her is that Homura doesn’t even say a word to her in reply. Just watches Kyouko go, like she already knows it’s the last she’ll be seeing of her.

 

Kyouko reevaluates the cornerstones of her universe. The means will vary, but Sayaka will collapse under the weight of her own grief, every time. What happens after that—if there is an after—is that Homura will hold out her hand, and Kyouko will take it.

The cornerstones of the universe, though, don’t take into account the fact that Kyouko loves nothing more than to fuck things up. So when Homura holds out her hand that day, her face a shadow, unreachable as always, Kyouko tightens her grip on Sayaka’s shoulder, grins up at her wide enough to show teeth.

“I think I’ll pass, this time,” says Kyouko, and when Homura’s eyes widen in something almost like surprise, Kyouko barely has time to taste the victory in her mouth before her world crashes down all around her.

 

*

 

Kyouko isn’t stupid, contrary to what others may think. Knows how to put two points together; how to follow a trail to the end. She realizes Homura’s responsible for something—something else, if not the cycle Kyouko’s stuck in. Something to do with time. It’s why she changes, sometimes, across the days that should be the same—because Homura isn’t. Not the same. Kyouko’s timelines are getting crossed with Homura’s, like wires. And if Homura knows things like magical girls turning to witches and Walpurgisnacht coming and Sayaka being lost long before Kyouko told her it was going to happen—then that means she knows other things, too.

“Are there timelines outside of this day, too?” Kyouko asks her. She’s cornered Homura up on a rooftop, and Homura doesn’t seem like she’s going to answer—of course, why did Kyouko expect anything else—but then:

“Yes.”

“Oh,” Kyouko says, “so we don’t get to this point, then,” and she tries to feel relieved, but it strikes hollow in her heart. It feels so very far away from them. “Does Sayaka not become a magical girl?”

“No.”

“What, do I—do I save her, before this?”

“No.” A pause. “Sometimes you aren’t even here.”

Kyouko swallows. Licks her lips. “Sometimes,” she says, “have I ever—are Sayaka and I ever friends?”

Homura looks at her, then. In a rare act of mercy, she says nothing at all. In a way it’s even worse.

“If I’m not here,” Kyouko says after a while, “then.” She narrows her eyes. “Tomoe Mami,” she says, like a revelation. “You knew her too, didn’t you?”

“I don’t see what she has to do with anything,” Homura says.

“Tell me,” Kyouko says. “In your universes. Does she always die?”

Homura doesn’t say anything for a long time, and then—“Why? Do you miss her?”

“Are you kidding me?” says Kyouko. She places a finger to the tip of her spear, presses down. “She’s finally off my goddamn back.” But she allows it a thought, then, perched on the edge of the building, staring down the rows of reflecting glass windows and steel and shining chrome under her feet. Mami, the gold in her hair when the sun beat down from the sky, curls bouncing neatly on her shoulders when she walked, flying wild when she fired the rifle of her gun. The smile that made her seem a million years old, seem safe, that made it seem like she knew everything. The straight spine of her resolve. Curl of her arm, outstretched, full of grace.

“I don’t miss her, either,” says Homura, looking out into the sky. Kyouko senses, with a chill, that she isn’t lying.

“Ow, shit,” says Kyouko. She’s forgotten about her finger on the spear. It’s bleeding when she removes it, and she sucks it into her mouth.

“You asked me—” Homura suddenly says, then bites off. It’s uncharacteristic of her, when usually everything that comes out of her mouth sounds like a carefully edited script. Homura does not make a mistake. That’s Kyouko’s job. “You asked me if Tomoe Mami always dies. I don’t—I don’t think you quite understand.”

“Understand what?” Kyouko says, around the finger in her mouth.

Homura turns to her, and the look in her eyes—“Everyone always dies,” she says. “Every single one of you. Every single time.”

A shiver runs down Kyouko’s spine. She covers it up by popping her finger out of her mouth, breaking into a smirk. “Figures,” she says. “I’ve died so many times by now, I should’ve known there had to be a reason I was so good at it.”

A pause. “And you should’ve known,” Kyouko says, baring teeth, “that I’d always come back to haunt you all.”

Homura regards her with her blank gaze, but something shifts, behind her eyes.

“Yes,” Homura says. “I suppose I should have.”

They stand there on the rooftop for a while in something like acquiescence. Neither saying a word. Sharing the same weight.

None of it stops Sayaka from sinking that night, and Kyouko from going up in flames with her.

 

*

 

In a way it’s so much worse going through all the motions when Homura knows exactly what she’s trying to do. “Could you stop staring at me,” Kyouko says. They’re in the abandoned apartment building where they meet, on the usual version of this day. Sayaka’s just run off, and the countdown is ticking away the minutes left before she turns into a witch, right on schedule, but instead of going after her Kyouko’d lingered behind, because she couldn’t stand the gravity of Homura’s sideways stare, weighing upon her from the shadows. “It’s like you’re judging me.”

“I don’t get it,” Homura says. “Why don’t you just stop doing the same thing every time?”

“What, like you?” Kyouko says without thinking, and Homura snaps so sudden, so unexpected Kyouko barely realizes what’s happening before she’s flung against the wall hard enough to crack. Instantly Kyouko’s back on her feet, snarling, but she’s already staring down the barrel of a gun, cocked and waiting. There’s no way to fight against time. Cheating, Kyouko thinks, with more than a hint of resentment.

“You don’t know a _thing,_ ” Homura says, eyes bleak, and it’s so wrong on her face Kyouko stops breathing for a moment—no, not her, not her, too. “You don’t know _anything_ about what I’ve had to do—you have _no idea_ —”

“Hey,” Kyouko says. “I’m in a time loop too, remember? I’m the _only_ one who knows anything about what you’ve had to do.”

She doesn’t know why, but that only seems to make Homura angrier, gun jabbing into Kyouko’s face. “You think you’re anything like me?” she hisses. “You think you’re anything like me, when you’re safe in your stupid little loop you never even wanted, when you’re _dead_ and you don’t have to worry about anything that happens next—”

The gun is shaking in Homura’s grip. Kyouko has never seen Homura anything less than steady in all their times together. She’s staring somewhere over Kyouko’s shoulder, as though at something terrible beyond them both, and Kyouko’s seen this look, before. She knows what it means. What comes after.

“It’s not so bad, right?” Homura whispers. “It’s just one day? And it never ends? And you get to be with her?”

Sayaka, standing tall against the sun, gleaming with the shine of her sword, bright and brilliant and already rusting into the copper of rotted metal, burning up into dust. Already turning away, looking at something else, someplace Kyouko can’t follow her to. But there’s a heart inside of her. Kyouko believes it, still. Will dig in deep with both hands if it means bringing it back into the light.

Kyouko reaches out. Closes her hand around the butt of the gun; feels the movement like muscle memory. Drags Homura’s gaze back, away from over her shoulder, level to Kyouko’s eye.

“It’s not so bad,” Kyouko says, “because I’m not alone.”

Homura lowers the gun. They stand there, left with only each other. Still as a mirror.  

 

Sayaka collapses under the weight of her grief. Homura holds out her hand, and Kyouko takes it. Follows her all the way home, Sayaka’s body still clutched in her arms. When they get there she lays it out on the couch. Stares down at the unblinking form. Runs a hand through its hair, soft as feathers. Feels something give inside of her with sudden clarity.

“Please,” Kyouko says, and Homura startles so badly she drops her teacup, smashing against the floor. “You’ve got to be able to do something about this, right? You can control time. Look, I don’t need much. Just send me back a little further.”

“That’s not how it works,” Homura says. “I never did anything to you—I don’t send anyone back except myself—”

“Just one more day, that's all. This day’s too late for anyone and anything, there’s nothing left here—If I just had more than this one day—If I had more time—”

But Homura is looking at her with the awful weight of what Kyouko already knows.

“It was always too late for Miki Sayaka,” Homura says, and Kyouko sees red.

“You _knew,_ ” Kyouko hisses, “you already knew this was going to happen, you always knew this was going to happen and you let it anyway—you let Sayaka die, Mami, you gave up on us like we aren’t anything at all and this was all because of you, I know it, so _fix_ it,” and she’s crowding forward into Homura’s space, fist clenched in Homura’s collar, and she can feel Homura’s breath on her cheek like a bruise, like a dare, like a fight waiting to happen. And she wants it. Oh yes she wants it, the blood and the beating and the sore under her fingernails if it means Homura will finally look her in the eye with something more than apathy, if it means that Homura will finally react, if it means that Homura will fight back. If it means that Kyouko can move one thing, anything, in this godforsaken world.

Homura’s gaze is steady, still, but something stirs. Low curl of her mouth, tender. Leaning forward.

“I’m trying,” Homura says. Whispered like a secret. When their mouths meet, it feels like absolution.

 

Later they sit on Homura’s bed, watching the window, the city outside. Night creeping into the sky.

“Don’t let me fall asleep,” Kyouko says. “Don’t let me sleep. Don’t let me.”

“Okay,” Homura says, gentle, like they both can’t see the approaching storm on the horizon, the afterbirth of a witch into the world. Sayaka, inexorable as the light of the rising sun.

After a moment Kyouko takes Homura’s hand. Homura looks at it, at their hands entwined on her lap, like a rare breed of insect she’s never seen before, in all her endless time of living.

But she also doesn’t let go.

 

*

 

Spots of gold. Bright, white, filtering through the dark. Kyouko wakes up and tries playing it straight as well as she can, because she knows, now—the answer is Kaname Madoka. Of course. Kyouko’s been looking in the wrong place, all this time. It was Homura who made her realize, the focus of her devotion, with all the precision of a microscope. The hero of the story. The one who’ll outlast them all.

“The only one who could reach her is you,” Kyouko says. She’s so tired. “Believe me. The only one is you.”

Stories where love and courage win out in the end always turn out like that, you know?

But maybe this isn’t one of those after all, because Madoka is crying, now, and Homura is here to save her. Kyouko knows this. She has someone to save, too.

Homura watches her through the fire, eyes glittering. She understands. Does not turn away. Allows Kyouko the dignity of her destiny.

The orchestra plays on. Sayaka is screaming in wordless agony. Has been, for so long.

Kyouko casts her soul up, up, up into the air, floating higher than she’d ever known it capable of, a feather on the breeze, waiting to alight home. She follows it up in flight, until she’s eye to eye with the witch, and as she reaches out to touch its face, she does not tremble. Her heart burns hot and heavy with the surety of what she knows—that she has all the time in the world.

 

*

 

The explosion vanishes into a single pinprick of white, and then bleeds away. Kyouko blinks, the negative image burned into her eyelids, adjusting to the darkness when she’d been staring into the bright burst of light for so long. And now—nothing, where there was once something. Her adrenaline’s racing from the fight, and she wills her heart to slow, to come back down to the ground. Breathes out.

“This is the fate of the magical girl,” Mami’s saying. Eyes cast forward, into the future.

“Damn it!” Kyouko says, clenching her fist. “We were just beginning to become friends.”

Homura looks at her.

Looks away.

**Author's Note:**

> for my sixteen-year-old self—this is it. this is the story you wanted. you did it.
> 
> and if you've read this far, thank you, too, for indulging me.


End file.
